Pearce's contract expires following the European Championships in Israel in June and the 50-year-old coach admits he has missed the day-to-day contact with players at club level.

"I enjoy the job that I do," said Pearce. "I have been reasonably successful, but not as successful as I would have liked to have been. Who knows what is in the future, though?

"I am contracted until next summer, and that has been the case every time I have gone into a major tournament. We will see.

"Yes, I would like more contact with players on a daily basis and more games to test myself. The other side of that is the environment I am working in.

"It gives me great pride and honour to work for the FA, and working with the best players in the country is a fantastic option.

"There are pluses and minuses in both options. I am enjoying what I am doing and we will see where that takes us over the next few months."

Asked if winning next summer's tournament would influence his decision, Pearce said: "No, it would be irrelevant. I would like to win the tournament but I have been trying to do that for the past five years.

"We have reached a final, a semi-final and a group stage. Now, we will try to prepare the team as well as we can going into the summer."

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t's wrong to be making a joke out of Bender's name at the expense of gay people. It's the kind of childish, uncivilised thing that Football365 would deride and ridicule if it was another media outlet saying. Why is there a need for jokes like this? Does it make your writers feel like men? F365 might suggest that I 'lighten up', but it is genuinely traumatic for people who have been oppressed all their lives to be the butt of jokes, and to be told...

ou can't blame De Gea for wanting to leave, he has enough to do in front of goal as it is as well as taking on the role of Man Utd's version of Derek Acorah in trying to contact and organise a defence that isn't there.